Colony 2.1: Prelude

Colony was back tonight with the debut of its second season, with an episode that was mostly prelude, and, like the first season, pretty good.

A couple of general impressions:  Colony now feels a little like FlashForward (cars suddenly stopping when the aliens arrive), Lost (prelude flashback), and even Fear the Walking Dead (the dawn of apocalypse).   All of that of course makes sense - especially given that star power from Lost (Josh Holloway) and The Walking Dead (Sarah Wayne Callies, not Fear the Walking Dead, buy close enough) are in Colony.

Colony was also a successor, from day one, to Falling Skies and its alien invasion, except we never saw the aliens per se in the first season.   Now we finally get to see ... well, not quite the aliens, but more of their ships and hardware.   We did see a big tall something, but it's not clear if that's an alien, robot, or even a tall co-opted human.

The prelude was generally satisfying, though - and, like everything else these days, like The Man in the High Castle, especially disquieting because ... you know why, look at who's set to be sworn in as President next week.  So Trump has had the unintended benefit of giving any show about a near-future or alternate history totalitarian state in the US a little more of an edge than it otherwise would have had.

But this first episode of the second has set the board nicely, and put the pieces in motion.  The first season had lots of potential, only some of which was realized.  I get the feeling that the second season will do better, and I'm looking forward to it.

See also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential ... 1.2: Compelling ... 1.5: Questions ... 1.6: The Provost ... Colony 1.7: Broussard ... Colony 1.8: Moon Base and Transit Zones ... Colony 1.9: Robot Arm ... Colony Season 1 Finale: Not Quite Enough


not exactly aliens, but strange enough ...  The Silk Code

Fear the Walking Dead 2.9: The Pharmacist and the Hotel California

One of the most interesting and potentially crucially important characters on both Walking Dead series was the focus of Fear the Walking Dead 2.9 last night:  the pharmacist.

He's said to have been bitten by an infected and amply survived.  We see the bite mark, mostly healed, on his shoulder.  So what's going on?

Possibly he has some kind of natural immunity to the plague bug.  This would be consistent with what we know of deadly plagues in our own off-screen reality. Even the deadliest plague has some survivors, however few.   If there were a scientific community of researchers who could study the pharmacist, his immune system could provide a key to fashioning some kind of mass immunity injection.  This, of course, could and would change everything.

Another possibility, given that he is a pharmacist, is that he concocted some kind of drug treatment for the plague, and it worked on him.  If that was the case, then all the possibilities described above for natural immunity would apply - scientific researchers could mass-produce the drug, which in turn would change everything.

Of course, in both cases, the pharmacist needs to get in touch with researchers - and they are in increasingly short supply in this infected world.

A third possibility, probably the most likely but the least interesting and the least fun, is that the pharmacist was bitten, but not by someone infected by the plague.   Given his talk about coming back from the dead, he certainly thinks he was bitten by a genuinely infected.   I hope he's right about surviving an infected bite, but you never know.

Meanwhile, we got a great hotel from hell in last night's episode - the only thing missing was the Eagles' "Hotel California," which could have been playing the background.

Looking forward to more.

See also Fear the Walking Dead 2.2: Almost the Last Night of the World ... Fear the Walking Dead 2.8: Nick and the Talking Dead, Literally

And see also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings ... Fear TWD 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way ... Fear TWD Season 1 Finale: Water Water

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Fear the Walking Dead 2.8: Nick and the Talking Dead, Literally

Fear the Walking Dead returned for the second part of its second season, with an episode - 2.8 - that featured Nick and a few of the best scenes we've seen in either of The Walking Dead series.

The very best, for me, was Nick walking with the walking dead, and imagining them speaking to him, gradually more discernibly, until we literally had the talking dead, but with no Chris Hardwick.   Now it would've been a wild change indeed if somehow some of the dead were indeed able to talk, and you never know completely with these shows, but the speaking in Nick's imagination was wild enough in itself.

We already knew, from earlier in the season, that Nick walked with the dead, and feels a sort of kinship to them.  But seeing him walk with them, experiencing this from the inside out, was impressive and memorable.   The way he got there was, too.  He's limping not because he's putting on the gait of the dead, but because he was bitten in the leg by a savage dog.  And, in the end, he can't even keep up the with the dead.  He's not stronger than the walkers, but in a real sense weaker, and his collapse on the highway made perfect sense.  It's saying, in effect, that the dead are in some sense stronger, less vulnerable, than the living - something we already knew from The Walking Dead, but never saw so clearly before with our very eyes on the screen.

The ending of this episode, though happy, was also the one trite element in this hour.  I mean, how many times are we going to see one of our heroes end of up in a town that looks like a piece of paradise in this infected world?

On the other hand, given what Trump thinks of Mexicans in our own real world, this happy ending was a tonic and good to see.   And I'll be back here with more as the season progresses.

See also Fear the Walking Dead 2.2: Almost the Last Night of the World

And see also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings ... Fear TWD 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way ... Fear TWD Season 1 Finale: Water Water

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Fear the Walking Dead 2.2: Almost the Last Night of the World

Fear the Walking Dead is back on AMC for its second season, and up to its second episode, just on the air tonight.  As I said last year when I first began watching the first season, I like this series in some ways a lot more than The Walking Dead, as heretical as that might sound.  But the proximity of Fear to our normalcy, such as it is, makes it more compelling in some ways than the parent show, in which the world, or at least the East Coast of the US part of it, often seems like another planet.

Tonight's episode of FTHW continued the theme of this second season - to wit, the sea is no escape from either the infected, as they're called in this series, or humans already on the road to the pathology of the mind caused by the apocalyptic epidemic.  Indeed, in 2.2, we and our heroes learn there's no likely safe haven on shore, either, however far that might be from fallen LA.

The father of the family in the house on the shore is planning on doing a Jonestown on his wife, his kids, himself, as Nick sadly but aptly puts it.   What the father is planning is also reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's "The Last Night of the World" (in the 1969 movie, The Illustrated Man, screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek, not in the original anthology), in which a scientist murders his children to spare them an horrific end of the world, only to wake the next morning with his wife to find the scientific predictions were wrong.

Of course, in Fear the Walking Dead, as in The Walking Dead, the end of the world is all too real. Still, it's a little early in both shows to murder your children to keep them from the infected, so the father in question in tonight's episode still deserved to be opposed.

As is also the case with both Walking Dead series, few rescue plans turn to be completely successful, and often are not at all.   The main takeaway of tonight's episode is Madison learning not only that you can't save everyone but you may well not be able to save anyone in this apocalypse aborning.

Strong stuff, and I'm looking forward to more.

And see also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings ... Fear TWD 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way ... Fear TWD Season 1 Finale: Water Water

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The Walking Dead 6.1: The Walking Herd

The Walking Dead was back for its sixth season last night, with a story split between the present and the past. The markers for these two narrative times was color for the present and black-and-white for the past, and Rick's face more (present) and less (past) healed, just in case you needed a little extra to get what was happening, or, I don't know, maybe for some reason you were watching in black-and-white.

Rick is back thoroughly in command and tougher than he was before he lost Lori. His main check is Morgan, who's tough too, but at least displays a little more humanity at this point than does Rick.

The object is to protect Alexandria from the potential onslaught of a fearsomely massive herd of walkers - keep them zombies rollin', in the right direction.  This may be the biggest herd we've ever seen on The Walking Dead, and echoes nicely and eerily with the smaller herd we see for the first time at the end of this first season's Fear The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead herd has been around much longer, and explains why Alexandria has been relatively safe until now - walkers who stumbled into the area were attracted to the herd not the haven.

But if something were to happen to attract the herd to the enclave - well this is what Rick must mobilize all around him to counter. I don't quite get how a herd this big would survive, without a social structure to distribute the food, but then again I guess walkers just love to eat but don't need to in order to "survive," right?

Anyway, a great set up for the new season - welcome back.

See also: The Walking Dead 5.1: The Redemption of Carole ... The Walking Dead 5.3: Meets Alfred Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone ... The Walking Dead 5.4: Hospital of Horror ... The Walking Dead 5.5: Anatomy of a Shattered Dream ... The Walking Dead 5.6-7: Slow ... The Walking Dead 5.8: Killing the Non-Killer ... The Walking Dead 5.9: Another Death in the Family ... The Walking Dead 5.11: The Smiling Stranger ... The Walking Dead 5.12: The Other Shoe ... The Walking Dead 5.13: The Horse and the Party ... The Walking Dead 5.15: The Bad Guy ... The Walking Dead Season 5 Finale: Morgan and Optimism

And see also The Walking Dead 4.1: The New Plague ... The Walking Dead 4.2: The Baby and the Flu ... The Walking Dead 4.3: Death in Every Corner ...The Walking Dead 4.4: Hershel, Carl, and Maggie ... The Walking Dead 4.6: The Good Governor ... The Walking Dead 4.7: The Governor's Other Foot ... The Walking Dead 4.8: Vintage Fall Finale ... The Walking Dead 4.9: A Nightmare on Walking Dead Street ... The Walking Dead 4:14: Too Far ... The Walking Dead Season 4 Finale: From the Gunfire into the Frying Pan

And see also The Walking Dead 3.3 meets Meadowlands ... The Walking Dead 3.4: Going to the Limit ... The Walking Dead 3.9: Making Crazy Sense ... The Walking Dead 3.10: Reinforcements ... The Walking Dead 3.11: The Patch ... The Walking Dead 3.12: The Lesson of Morgan ... The Walking Dead 3.13: The Deal ... The Walking Dead 3.14: Inescapable Parable ... The Walking Dead 3.15: Merle ... The Walking Dead 3.16: Kill or Die, or Die and Kill

And see also The Walking Dead Back on AMC ... The Walking Dead 2.2: The Nature of Vet  ... The Walking Dead 2.3: Shane and Otis ... The Walking Dead 2.4: What Happened at the Pharmacy ... The Walking Dead 2.6: Secrets Told ... The Walking Dead 2.7: Rick's Way vs. Shane's Way ...  The Walking Dead 2.8: The Farm, the Road, and the Town  ... The Walking Dead 2.9: Worse than Walkers ... The Walking Dead 2.11: Young Calling the Shots ... The Walking Dead 2.12: Walkers Without Bites ... The Walking Dead Season 2 Finale

And see also The Walking Dead 1.1-3:  Gone with the Wind, Zombie Style ... The Walking Dead Ends First Season

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 a different plague here

Fear the Walking Dead Season 1 Finale: Water Water

Fear the Walking Dead concluded its all-too-brief first season last night, and although The Walking Dead will be starting its next season next week, I'll be missing Fear TWD and wishing it was continuing on television screen - beyond its webcasts - too.

The most significant development in this last episode for a year was the luxury ship off-shore, and its holding of some hope of distance from the walkers.   Ultimately, the question is whether the walkers can't be swimmers.  It certainly seems they can't - I mean, what kind of stroke could they do?  They lack the coordination to do any of the swimming strokes that at least I do at the pool.

But there's a further implicit question here: can the walking dead drown?  If not, then couldn't they just stagger into the water and out to any boat, in water over their head?  I suppose they could - but they would likely be swept away by any decent current.   I'm pretty sure we've already seen them swept away in river currents on The Walking Dead, and ocean currents would be much stronger.

Still, our human survivors finding impregnable safety on the water seems too easy a solution - though, hey, solution is something that comes from water, right?  Anyway, it'll be fun to see what's in store next year.

My other favorite part of this season finale was Nick telling his mother that he was more ready for the apocalypse than anyone else in the family, because was already somewhat out of his mind, and was coping with the insanity of being an outsider even when the world was relatively sane.   This was reminiscent of Robert De Niro's' character Michael in the excellent 1978 movie The Deer Hunter - Michael fares the best in the  insanity of fighting and getting captured  in Vietnam because he was already somewhat crazy at home.  It's impressive to see Fear The Walking Dead picking up on this profound and counter-intuitive aspect of human nature.

The Walking Dead does this too, but as I said as soon as I saw the first episode of Fear TWD, there's something about the greater proximity of this story to our reality that makes it more riveting to me.

See also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings ... Fear TWD 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way

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Fear the Walking Dead 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way

Fear the Walking Dead continued its powerful start tonight, with a second episode which was relentlessly strong, pounding, and frightening.   As in The Walking Dead, humans have as much to fear from other humans as from zombies, except at this stage the humans include police, a situation all too familiar and chilling to anyone who watches the non-fictitious news.   The cops kill a homeless man.  He's laying there, dead.  Will he soon stagger to his feet?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, you just knew Art would be a zombie, because, well, he looked like a zombie already, last week, when he was still human.  And he faked us out nicely then, when it turned out he wasn't yet a zombie, but was just hunched over, engrossed in some audio.   So seeing him attain his destiny tonight was chillingly satisfying.

I didn't mention Tobias in my review of episode 1, but I was impressed with him then.  He's the only person we've met and seen so far who knows something of what is really going on, and he carries that burden well.  Tonight, he's only happy because he got back his knife, and I'm hoping he accepts Madison's offer to come live (and no doubt run) with them.  Yeah, there's no way that won't happen.

Nick (played by Frank Dillane, son of Stephen Dillane of Game of Thrones and other notable fame, by the way), put in another fine outing, capped off by apparently pretending to be worse than he really was in his drug withdrawal, as a way of getting his sister Alicia to stay with him.  (I say "apparently," because, although he tells his mother he got his sister to stay, you can never be 100% sure.)  Good job Alycia Debnam-Carey playing Alicia, by the way.

Just about every character we've met at any length is appealing, which raises of the question of who will be the first to go among the beloved or at least appealing characters?  It would be something of a coup if the answer was none of these, for at least a while, but this is still The Walking Dead universe we're dealing with, so that's not very likely.

And I'll be back here next week - or, actually, two weeks from tonight, because next week's Labor Day - with a review of the next episode.

(I find most holidays, by the way, to be annoyances.  Here I am making this very point on a HuffPost Live panel earlier this week.)

See also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings

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Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings

Fear the Walking Dead, the prequel to The Walking Dead, debuted on AMC last night, and I gotta say, blasphemous as it may be, that I liked it better than many an episode of The Walking Dead in recent years.

The opener of Fear the Walking Dead was a perfect little masterpiece in itself - beginning like an episode of The Walking Dead, then pulling out to reveal that this world of Los Angeles was still teeming with human beings, and thus a big, significant step before the world of The Walking Dead.

And the episode continues in that fine, frightening vein - beyond frightening, because we the audience of course know all too well what's going on, and what Nick experienced is all too real.  But no one, including Nick, quite knows that yet, and the arc of this first episode bends slowly towards Nick proving to himself and his mother and her man that what he saw in that drug den - his girl friend turned into a flesh eating zombie - was exactly what truly had happened.

And this is beginning to happen all over Los Angeles and in at least five states.  The police can't control zombies who get up and come back at them after being riddled by bullets.   Hospitals can't treat an illness which leaves the deceased all to read to actively spread the disease further and further. We've seen the ultimate result of this in The Walking Dead, and that knowledge makes this prequel even more blood curdling.

Indeed, what we know invests every encounter with the potential for unimaginable danger - or, peril that we can indeed not only imagine but have seen on The Walking Dead.  A school administrator is hunched over his desk, non-responsive.  Has he already turned?  No, in this case he's just listening to some audio.   But it may happen next time we see him, and may have already happened to some poor soul who walked by one of our central characters in the hall.

And the ending leaves provocative questions, too.  Were Nick's mother Madison and Travis bitten in their encounter with the newly-minted zombie?  In The Walking Dead, our characters know to look for that.  In Fear the Walking Dead, no one yet knows what to look for, which means anything can happen.

One of the big reasons I'll be watching next week.

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